


Make Do

by Echo7



Series: Pupcake Patchwork [10]
Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, Language, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26185381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echo7/pseuds/Echo7
Summary: Delia Busby was very accustomed to making do.
Relationships: Delia Busby/Patsy Mount
Series: Pupcake Patchwork [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693711
Comments: 19
Kudos: 64





	Make Do

_ They would make do,  _ Delia promised herself, even as she desperately tried to ignore the mounting sense of foreboding that came with watching Patsy place the perfume she had just given her into a familiar blue and white shoebox. Still, as her girlfriend wrapped the fragile bottle in her dead mother’s bridal handkerchief and tucked it carefully alongside the other mementos of all she had lost, Delia couldn’t help the nagging feeling that she would soon be counted amongst their number.

She tried to shake it off. It was only Poplar. Not even three miles would separate them. Just a short ride on the Number 15 bus. Nothing, really.

But it wasn’t nothing. They had lived in the same building since training, since before their friendship had blossomed into something more - something beautiful and dangerous and far more fragile than a glass bottle wrapped in silk and lace. Something easily hidden amongst the other dozens of girls piling into each other’s rooms to share illicit whisky and laughter behind closed doors. Something that would be far more complicated to hide with three miles and conflicting work schedules between them.

Delia watched as Patsy carefully placed the shoebox into her black suitcase, cushioning it between a pair of neatly folded red trousers and a familiar set of blue striped pyjamas. The lid closed with a thwump and a snap of clasps that seemed to ring in Delia’s ears. She watched as Patsy turned her head, golden red hair swinging loose around her shoulders as she gave the room a last once-over. Everything was neat and tidy. Empty. Final.

Patsy was leaving the Nurses Home. And Delia was staying behind.

It would be so much easier if they were like any other couple. Patsy could take her new job, and no one would think to question why they wanted to spend every free evening in each other’s company. Quite the contrary, people would expect them to. But they weren’t like every other couple, and they couldn’t spend all their free nights together without raising suspicions. If they were lucky, Delia would get to see Patsy once every fortnight. If they were very lucky, perhaps twice. 

And even when they did get together, it would be to share a coffee or go to the pictures. It would be in public. No more late nights spent wrapped in each other’s arms on a twin mattress, sharing kisses and confidences until the night matron began making her rounds at curfew. The most they could hope for was holding hands in a dark cinema or sneaking a furtive, fleeting kiss down some empty alley. How long could they last like that?

Sadness began to claw at the last of Delia’s tattered, hopeful edges. 

But then, Patsy turned to her, eyes bright in a way they hadn’t been in far too long. And Delia remembered. 

Patsy needed this change. Working at the London had drained her of nearly every ounce of happiness until the only bright spot in her life had been the love they shared. And, no matter how strong that love was, it would never be enough. Eventually, it would give way as well, and a bitter resentment would bloom and fester in its place.

Delia let out a long breath, and with it, a wave of apprehension. It was only Poplar. Not even three miles would separate them. Just a short ride on the Number 15 bus. Nothing, really.

“Ready?” she asked.

Patsy reached for her, pulling Delia in by their clasped hands even as her face scrunched up with uncertainty. “As I’ll ever be,” she sighed. Worried blue eyes looked down at Delia as their joined hands swayed between them. “We’ll be alright won’t we?” Patsy whispered.

Delia nodded, dropping Patsy’s hands and wrapping her arms around her waist in a tight hug. “We’ll make it work,” she promised.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Delia let the stiff, moth-eaten lace run between her fingers for a moment before lightly brushing it aside to peer out the window. It wasn’t much of a view - at least the little she could make out through the glare on the filthy glass - just the silhouette of the buildings across the road, backlit by the glow of the moon through the hazy night sky. Still, it faced east, and Delia could picture how the early morning sun would light up the room with its gentle bloom. 

Once they cleaned the window, that is.

Beside her, Patsy dislodged some long abandoned spider’s web to pick up a ceramic jug from the windowsill. Without even looking, Delia smirked at the small scowl she knew would be painted across her girlfriend’s face - Patsy’s default expression when faced with all things untidy. Affection bloomed so suddenly in her chest it ached.

A home. 

They were making a home. 

Together they turned from the window, Patsy still focused on the ceramic jug as Delia took in the rest of the small lounge.

It was dark and dingy, that much was certain. Though Delia couldn’t be sure if the dimness was down to the lone dust-covered bulb soldiering on in the ceiling fixture or the years-thick brownish yellow film of smoke and nicotine coating the walls and ceiling. Probably both, she reckoned. A battered dropleaf table and equally worn set of kitchen chairs took up half of the right hand wall, with the other half played host to what looked to be a pile of rubbish. Against the opposite wall was a sideboard, which, surprisingly, looked to be in fair condition aside from a few minor scratches and a generous coating of dust. 

All things considered, the place was rather ramshackle.

But that was all cosmetic. It was nothing a bit of paint and polish, and no small amount of cleaning, couldn’t fix. They could do that together, though Patsy was sure to do the lion’s share of the latter. 

Delia felt her cheeks tighten as an excited grin began to spread across her face. Yes, they would make do.

Despite the rather tatty look to it now, she could picture it so clearly. It helped that she had been picturing it for years. Not this exact flat, of course. But a life.

Patsy waking with first light, making coffee in their kitchen. Snuggling up together on the settee as they listened to the wireless in the evenings. Laughing at Patsy’s face as she gallantly suffered through a series of truly terrible meals in Delia’s quest to learn to cook. Feeling cold hands wrap around her when Patsy crawled into bed after coming home from delivering a baby in the small hours. Not to mention other, less restful activities they could get up to in the small hours.

Yes, Delia had put quite a bit of time into dreaming about what their lives could be like someday. She had just never truly thought that someday would actually arrive. Yet, here it was. And it was like her dreams were painting themselves up the stained skirting board and over the peeling wallpaper, polishing the dull finish on the left-behind furniture until it glowed with potential.

They wouldn’t just make do. They would make a future. 

Together.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Light. 

That was the only way to describe how she felt. 

What a foreign feeling. 

It had been over six months since Delia had felt anything even approximating lightness. Sure, there had been moments of levity. Moments when the leaden weight pushing her down since she woke in a hospital with no memory of the people in tears by her bedside had felt just a little less heavy. The dark uncertainty that was her future, just a little less dim. Moments stolen in a phone box as the snow fell around them. Moments sharing good news in a tea shop with a warm hand covering hers. Moments spent with Patsy.

Looking at her girlfriend now, grinning down at her from her perch up on the raised brick wall surrounding the convent’s small front porch, Delia couldn’t help but marvel at the sudden change her life had taken.

Just one hour ago, Delia had been steeling herself to say goodbye. To Patsy. To London. To the life she had built before an ill-fated bicycle ride had sent her future careening towards the pavement in a heap of limbs and twisted metal. But then Sister Julienne had offered her a place to lodge at Nonnatus House, and Delia had grabbed onto it like the lifeline it was.

It wouldn’t be the same of course. Nothing could erase what had happened. Even now, Delia didn’t remember much about the days surrounding the accident - just a blurry haze of pain, confusion, and palpable terror - but it had changed her. She wasn’t the fearless girl that had struck out to the capital on her own to start a new life. She was a twenty-four-year-old woman who hadn’t even had the fortitude to stand up to her mother without the insistence of a nun and a table full of encouraging smiles.

But she had done it in the end, and in a little over two months she would be moving into a room right down the hall from Patsy. It wouldn’t be what they had hoped for when they were planning the flat, but they would make do. At least now they had a chance to.

  
  


\-----

  
  


She thought she had been clear. It was supposed to be a date. 

A  _ date _ .

Sure, when one was making plans with a friend and asked, ‘Is it a date?’ it was understandable to think it would be fine to invite others along as well. The more the merrier.

But when your  _ girlfriend _ asked you that same question? Your girlfriend, who had been talking about seeing  _ La Dolce Vita  _ for twelve months. Your girlfriend, who had taken the time to check both of your work schedules to see when you are free and found that the first available evening was over a week and a half away. That very same girlfriend who you have yet to have an evening out with since she moved back to London after recovering from a traumatic brain injury. When  _ she _ asked? She meant a  _ date _ . 

It was a very good thing that Trixie was distracted by Barbara’s sudden appearance or the look Delia gave Patsy would have blown their cover for certain. 

Delia knew it would be harder managing their secret relationship within the walls of a convent than it had been at the Nurses Home. For starters, Patsy had a roommate, so late night rendezvous were more difficult to hide or explain away. Plus, that roommate was also Patsy’s friend, and excluding her from what appeared to be a friends’ outing would be difficult to do without hurting her feelings. 

She sighed. It wasn’t Patsy’s fault. Not really.

The familiar frustration from having to hide had barely had a chance to coalesce in Delia’s gut before an equally familiar resignation smothered it. They would make do.

“Do you fancy coming to the pictures next week, Barbara?” she asked, figuring that if it was no longer a date, they might as well go all in. Although, she couldn’t help taking a slight jibe at Patsy by adding, “If enough people join in, we could book a charabanc.”

Watching Barbara fumble through a transparent fabrication about a visiting cousin, Delia thought they might not be the only ones hiding something - or  _ someone _ . Still, though Babs might be a terrible liar, at least she still had a date.

  
  


\-----

Delia had been singled out for most of her life.

She was the youngest of three, and the only girl at that. Growing up, her older brothers had mostly treated her as some sort of pawn in their eternal struggle to one-up each other, which honestly, was preferable. On the seldom occasions Wil and Ed teamed up together, it typically resulted in some creative means of torture that only older brothers were capable of.

Her dad had indulged her in ways that fathers often did with their daughters, and although everyone in the family joked that she was his favorite, they all secretly saw the truth in it. 

Meanwhile, her mother had been relieved to finally not be the only woman in the family. Thus, Delia’s childhood was filled with her mam’s increasingly futile attempts to mold her into the kind of woman she thought she should be. Not one to be discouraged, Eilwen Busby only seemed to view her daughter’s obvious lack of interest in such pursuits as an opening for renewed effort, and thus Delia was rarely free from her focused, calculating gaze.

Then in adolescence, Delia had realised just how different she was to all the other girls. That was when she had first realised the dangers of being singled out, and it was the first time she had truly desired to be able to simply disappear amongst a crowd. Because the way that Delia loved was conspicuous, Or rather,  _ who _ Delia loved was conspicuous. Other girls her age could walk down the street with their beau’s arms draped casually around their shoulders. They could hold hands, flirt, even kiss in broad daylight and only draw the ire of the most stodgily conservative passersby. Delia could never be that invisible. She could never blend in. She had to hide.

But hiding would have never been enough in her small village where everyone knew each other. If Delia had stayed, she would have had to force that part of herself to disappear completely. 

She had had a choice. Stay, marry a man she could never truly love, and make do. Or leave, and have a chance at something more.

Delia chose more.

In London, it was much easier to hide who she was. No one knew her there. She wasn’t  Edwyn and  Gwilym ’s little sister, or Eilwen and Huw’s youngest. She was just a girl on the street, a stranger amongst many - at least until she opened her mouth. Still, she was hardly the only Londoner without a native accent. The capital was full of people from all over Great Britain - all over the Commonwealth. Even with her foreign lilt, it was easy to hide who she really was. After all, there was nothing  _ really _ to hide.

Until she met Patsy.

Falling in love with Patsy was the first time Delia truly understood what all those fairy princess stories had been about. It was as if her own fairy godmother had come down and granted her her heart’s desire, with the caveat that she could never leave the tower. Never go to the ball.

But in her dreams, she and Patsy could do all the things that other couples -  _ normal _ couples - took for granted. In her dreams, they could go on dates, walk hand-in-hand down the street, even gush to their friends about whatever sweet thing the other had done. And best of all, in her dreams they could  _ dance _ .

Tonight was like a dream come true. Delia hovered on the top step, feeling a heady mix of excitement and fear as she looked out into the hazy bar filled with women. 

Women like them.

Even through the soles of her black patent pumps, Delia could feel her toes curling over the edge of the step. A diver preparing for the plunge. 

Patsy stepped up beside her, her usual calm facade nowhere to be found as she mirrored Delia's expression of nervous anticipation. 

Then, as one, they both reached out, and took the other’s hand. 

In public.

For a moment, that familiar fear lept in Delia’s throat until she realised that no one was looking. No one cared. They were like them. For the first time ever, the way Delia loved didn’t make her stand out. It was normal here.  _ She _ was normal here.

Hand-in-hand, Patsy and Delia walked down the short steps into the bar and into an entirely different world. 

And then, they were dancing.

Patsy’s arm was draped over her shoulder, Delia’s hand was loose around her waist, and both were smiling so brightly they hardly paid notice to their feet. They simply turned on the spot, lost in the feeling of it all. It wasn’t a waltz, or even a foxtrot, but they were in a room full of people, and they were dancing.

Technically, this wasn’t the first time they had danced together in public. There was, of course, the square dance last September, but that had been more hopping around each other in a circle than truly dancing. The only time they had touched had been when all the women in their square had put their hands in together to promenade in a circle, and even then they had been sandwiched between Trixie and Barbara. 

They had danced as a pair on a few occasions too, usually in pyjamas with a bedroom full of their fellow nurses. Always careful to keep their distance. Keep it friendly. Keep it brief. Which was just as well. Being in Patsy’s arms like that, however loosely, had always left Delia yearning for more. 

_ This _ was what more felt like. And god, more felt glorious. For the first time in perhaps her entire life, Delia felt as if she could breathe. 

Tension she didn’t even realise she was holding dropped out of her shoulders, and her head dipped forward, coming to rest with her forehead pressed against Patsy’s. 

No, glorious didn’t even come close to describing this feeling. It was ineffable. It felt as if every atom in her body was simultaneously humming with energy and utterly, completely still. Delia felt…

...like Delia. 

Freely. 

Completely.

And she thought, if she could have this feeling, even occasionally - even once a year - then all the hiding and lying and making do might just be worth it. But then, now that she knew this feeling, Delia might never want to make do again.

  
  


\-----

  
  


“You two are as thick as thieves.”

Delia paused in her chewing. Mouth suddenly dry. 

Her mother was right about one thing, the butter was too cold for these tea cakes. The sweet yeasty bun had turned suddenly brittle on her tongue, like a mouth full of paper-mache. In the heavy silence that followed her mother’s words, Delia had the fleeting thought if she didn’t swallow soon, her mouth might dry and harden, silencing her forever.

It might as well have.

_ Say something _ , she thought. And, judging by the look Patsy shot her, her girlfriend was thinking the same thing. But she couldn’t find her voice.

_ “You two are as thick as thieves.” _

Her mother suspected.

No. Her mother  _ knew _ .

Patsy sighed, disappointment radiating off of her as she turned towards Delia’s mother, determined to get what they came for. 

“Mrs. Busby, would you give Delia her birth certificate?”

Delia felt like a child.

She sat still. Silent. Listening over the pounding in her ears as Patsy and her mother waged some strange, polite war for her soul. Both wanted what was best for her, whilst neither seemed to truly understand what that was. 

Delia may as well have not been there. They both were certainly talking as if she wasn’t. They weren’t even looking at her.

Silence overtook the table again, and Delia’s mother finally looked at her. It was quick. If Delia hadn’t been staring at her like it was the last time she’d see her, she would have missed it. But there was a fleeting look in her eyes that seemed to clench Delia’s heart in a vice.

Her mother took a dainty sip of her tea, and reached for her handbag.

“You always did things your own way. I can bear it if you upset me, I’m your mam.”

Delia stared, afraid to even blink. Her mother pulled something from her bag and finally looked her squarely in the eye for the first time since upturning Delia’s entire world.

“And you're a grown woman.”

Delia looked down at the envelope being extended to her. Her birth certificate. It was exactly what they had come here to get, but she hesitated, her throat feeling impossibly tight.

If she could breathe, she would have sobbed.

It felt so final. 

For what was perhaps the first time in her entire life, her mother was giving her a choice.

Delia didn’t want to choose. And yet, here she was.

Her instinct, of course, was to choose Patsy. After all, she had chosen her and chosen her and would keep choosing her for as long as she was able. Patsy  _ knew _ her. All of her. And Delia knew Patsy. Not even amnesia had been able to keep them apart.

But, on the other side was her mother. Her mam. The woman who had given birth to her, raised her, loved her, cared for her even when Delia hadn’t even been able to recognise her. But she was more than just her mother - if that title could ever be reduced by a simple qualifier like  _ ‘just _ .’ She was the gatekepper for Delia’s entire family. To Wil and Ed. To her dad.

Delia reached out, and with trembling fingers, took the envelope. She looked down at it. Vision blurring.

After all, Delia had made her choice years ago, well before Patsy was even one of the options. She had chosen to leave Pembrokeshire. To strike out on her own. Make her own money. Live a life on her own terms instead of settling for marriage to a man she could never love. She had chosen to be herself, and that choice had made this moment inevitable.

“Just don’t do anything to make your dad cry.”

It was as close to approval as she would ever get. And it was clearly conditional.

_ Be careful. Don’t get caught. Don’t shame us with your deviant choices. Don’t make us choose. _

She would lose them. Perhaps she already had.

Delia sat in silent numbness, staring at the envelope in her hands, as the tea continued on around her.

Then, before she knew it, she was standing outside. Wearing her coat. Worried blue eyes dipping down to her level to see if she was alright.

She wasn’t.

_ Oh god. _

Thumbs were brushing against her cheek, wiping away tears she hadn’t realised were falling. Indecipherable words in a reassuring RP accent were flowing past her ears, but Delia couldn’t quite make them out.

_ Oh god. _

“She knows,” Delia managed to say, her voice sounding alarmingly hollow even to her own ears. 

It was as if saying it out loud had settled the panicked bird fluttering around in her insides. Cupping it between her hands. Feeling its fearful heart pounding against her palms.

She blinked, consciously taking in her surroundings for the first time since her mother had cast everything into a stark dichotomy. Patsy had pulled them into an empty side street. They were tucked under an awning for a bakery long-closed for the evening. Patsy’s hair was still in its neat bun, but worry etched every surface of her face.

Now that the numbness had abated, all Delia felt was anguish.

“Oh god, Pats. She knows,” she whispered, voice cracking with a sob.

Patsy pulled her in, wrapping Delia up in her arms around as she clung to her.

“What am I going to do,” Delia asked, voice muffled where her face was pressed into Patsy’s wool coat, “You heard her in there. I’m going to lose them.”

She felt Patsy’s head shake, her arms wrapping tighter around her. “You won’t,” she assured. 

“You can’t promise that,” Delia whispered. 

Patsy sighed, and Delia felt her breath ruffle her hair. “I know. But we’ll do everything we can not to. I know your mother and I don’t exactly get along,” she chuckled mirthlessly, “but I don’t want you to lose them either.”

Delia pulled back, looking up into her girlfriend’s face, as desperation choked in her lungs. “But what if I  _ do _ ?”

Patsy looked at her, and Delia could see the tenderness in her eyes. The understanding. If anyone understood losing family - living or dead - it was Patsy.

A small sympathetic half smile hooked up Patsy’s face, and she gave a little shrug. “The only thing you can do,” she said, squeezing Delia’s arms and looking down at her with fierce, determined eyes, “You’ll make do.  _ We’ll _ make do.”

  
  


\-----

  
  


Delia was used to spending the majority of her day hiding parts of herself away. All her fear, her sadness, her happiness, her love. At least when Patsy was here, she had someone to share it all with at the end of the day. She could open the valve and release some of the pressure. At least when Patsy was here, she was  _ here _ . Full stop.

If it wasn’t for Phyllis’s quiet support, Delia thought she might explode. 

But it had been a fortnight since Delia had seen Charles Mount’s obituary in the  _ Times _ , and Delia still yet to hear a word from Patsy. Her girlfriend’s father had been gone for over a month and it was as if Patsy had dropped off the face of the earth. Delia was afraid she was never coming back. She was even more afraid for Patsy. 

Patsy had never dealt well with loss. Her first experience had been so catastrophic, and at such a young age, that it had set a path that was too well-worn to veer away from. She was only ten-years-old when, in a few short months, she had become an orphaned only child, starving in a prison camp. She’d had to put aside her grief in order to survive. For nearly two years, she’d lived with that grief wrapped up tight inside her chest until her heart had simply grown around it, like a tree planted too close to a fence. When Patsy lost someone, she never let herself grieve. She closed herself off. She ran away.

Where was she? Was she alright? Was she taking care of herself without work to distract her? Was she somewhere alone in that big old house, scrubbing the floors until her hands cracked and bled? 

They’d promised to write. To wait. To love. And Delia was finding it incredibly difficult to make do when that first promise had been broken. When she was left with no other choice but to wait. When all she had was her love and all the pain it cost, piling up inside her. Burying her alive from the inside-out.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Delia sat propped against an unfamiliar headboard in an unfamiliar room. It was late, verging on early, but the sky outside was bright in that eerie way that sometimes happened when it was snowing. It lit up the foreign angles of the space, casting sinister shadows from an otherwise benign wardrobe and floor lamp. But the unnatural ghostly lighting wasn’t what was keeping her awake.

When she had first left Pembrokeshire and moved into her room at the Nurses Home, it had taken weeks for Delia to feel at ease in a new space. The same had held true when she had first come to Nonnatus as well. It was as if she had inherited some vestigial fight or flight instinct from some long-dead ancestor. Like a duck sleeping with one eye open.

She’d thought she’d overcome it when they had gone traveling after Patsy’s father had died. They had never stayed anywhere long enough to truly settle in, and with all the traveling through various time zones, her body had had to relent. 

But it seemed her old restlessness was back, which was ridiculous given that this was her own home.

Then again, that was probably the problem.

This was  _ their _ home. Their sanctum. The place where they were supposed to be able to close the door and be like any other couple. The one place in all the world where they never had to hide who they were.

Until tonight, that is.

Don’t get her wrong, it was a wonderful surprise to see Trixie, Phyllis, and Valerie, and it was also nice to finally meet Lucille. They hadn’t all been together since before Barbara had died, and spending time with their dear friends had helped paper over the void where Babs should have been. Delia would have been happy to have them stay the night even if rough sailing from the Outer Hebrides and a snow storm in the Highlands hadn’t forced the group from Nonnatus to stop in Glasgow for the night before heading the rest of the way back to Poplar. With the sisters and the Turners staying at a hotel, they definitely had the room.

Though, she supposed that was why she was in her current predicament.

Moving here had seemed like a good idea at the time, although admittedly, after nearly a year of travel, Delia would have been happy to put down roots just about anywhere. Of course, she would have preferred London, but she understood Patsy’s need to be away from it for a while after Barbara died. Her girlfriend’s method of grieving seemed to be retreating from the people and places that reminded her of who she had lost. She’d pulled away from her father after the war, and then had left Hong Kong at the first chance she had after he had died. Now it was Poplar and the family she had built there. It wasn’t a good long-term solution, but with their friend’s death coming so close on the heels of that of Patsy’s father, Delia had been willing to give her time.

So, they’d come to Scotland.

Patsy’s family had owned a townhouse in Glasgow since the city’s shipping industry had boomed towards the end of the last century. But, with the city’s industry in decline, and very few Mount men left to carry on the business, it had been left uninhabited. So, her father’s cousin had been happy to offer it to Patsy and her  _ friend _ for as long as they wanted it.

It was supposed to be temporary, but here they were, nearly a year and a half later, rattling around in a house that was far too big for two people. Usually, Delia didn’t mind it. It was a lovely home - three stories of polished parquet floors and hand carved woodworking that made Delia thankful that her girlfriend enjoyed cleaning as much as she did.

But right now, she found herself thinking wistfully of that filthy one-room flat in Poplar. There were simply too many bedrooms here - one for them and each of their guests, if Valerie and Lucille hadn’t insisted on sharing so as not to put either of their hosts out of their own bed. 

Or so they thought.

Because this wasn’t Delia’s bed. Or her bedroom. It was the room they kept loosely as a decoy of sorts in case anyone came to call. The only part of the room Delia used was the wardrobe, and that was mostly for storing out-of-season clothes, like the thin short-sleeved pyjamas she had been forced to wear because it would have been too suspicious to get her usual pair from ‘Patsy’s room.’

She sighed, letting her head fall back against the polished oak headboard and loll to the side to look out towards the window. The sky was still bright with snow, even at nearly three in the morning, making the sheer curtains glow an ethereal white in the dark room. Strangely, it reminded her of Barbara. The last time Delia had really seen her, she had been dressed all in white, lit up by the warm glow of a carousel as the snow fell around her. So happy. So young.

Delia pulled the blankets tighter around herself as the fire burned low in the grate. A dwindling log gave way, kicking up a fluttering cloud of dust and fine ash that seemed to wink at her as it floated through the light from the window, reminding her of the words she had heard at her uncle's funeral many years ago.

_ Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. _

Life could be so short. Was this really how she wanted to spend hers? Lying and hiding, even from the people she loved. Even in her own home.

She remembered being at that squaredance four years ago and wishing for a place where she and Patsy could really dance together. Patsy had thought it impossible then, and if she was being honest, Delia had been more hopeful than realistic when she had said there must be a place. But they had found it, not even a year later. The Gateways club had been there the entire time.

So far, they hadn’t found anywhere in Glasgow that was exclusively for women like them, but there were places they could go. Little boltholes tucked into the backs of certain pubs or hidden in plain sight at certain coffee shops where women and men like them could meet and mingle. But these places were just temporary sanctuaries, as, it would seem, was their own home.

Delia was tired of seeking sanctuary. She was tired of having to diminish what she and Patsy shared by referring to her as her friend or her flatmate. She was tired of having to put their relationship second in order to keep up appearances. Tired of not being able to go on dates without worrying or having friends along as unwitting third wheels. Tired of having to endure endless questions about when she was going to settle down and get married, or worse, pitying warnings about how if she didn’t find a man soon, she would end up a lonely spinster. Tired of not ever being able to truly be herself. Tired of  _ making do _ .

Delia wanted more. And she wanted it with Patsy. 

It seemed like a lifetime since they had sat across from each other in the Silver Buckle as Delia confessed that sometimes she wondered if it would be easier to give up what they had and marry a man. She would never consider that now. They had fought too hard, been through too much, to just give up. But Delia still had a lot of fight left in her. And so did Patsy.

Something had changed in Patsy after her time away in Hong Kong. The Patsy that came back was a little less proper, a little less fearful, a little less buttoned up. She was still careful to never put them at risk of exposure - the kiss in the open right down the street from a vicar’s wedding celebration, notwithstanding - but she was less afraid of casual touches. Of towing the line of how girl friends and girlfriends interact. She had even been more open to going to places frequented by women like them. That was how they’d met Shona and Elspeth.

It was new and rather wonderful being friends with another couple like them. For the first time in her life, Delia had actually been able to really  _ talk _ to someone about their relationship. Sure, Phyllis had been an absolute brick during Patsy’s long absence, but she had been more of a stalwart presence of support than a confident. They had never actually openly talked about anything. But they could talk to Shona and Elspeth. She and Patsy finally had friends who were a couple, just like them, and they soon learned that there was an entire network of women like them throughout Great Britain, even throughout the world. They had organisations and magazines. There were even groups in America who promoted  _ visibility _ for women like them. Who were fighting to be seen for who they  _ were _ , instead of people suffering from some sort of deviant psychological condition.

Delia could see the appeal to that fight. She was so tired of making do. Of living a half-life. She and Patsy had been fighting for each other for years, it would almost be a relief to have others to fight alongside. To make a bigger change. To make it so that one day, they might not have to hide anymore. Wasn’t it worth the risk?

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I went _way_ over in length for this one, but Jojo's prompt just sparked so much. This one ended up turning into a sort of Delia-centered companion story to my Patsy-centered _Sticks and Stones._ Unplanned, but 🤷.
> 
> \-----
> 
> After a bit of a hiatus, our little patchwork returns! Up next is a story by MystWords.
> 
> Again, if you'd like to join our project, email me at echo7fic [at] gmail.com.


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